Anna Bjšrnsdotter tends to her peach tree in the garden of her Long Beach home on Wednesday afternoon. MELINA PIZANO, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

L.A. County offers residential water rebates

There are a variety of programs to help residents conserve water, including the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Water District's rain barrel rebate.

The water district offers a $75 rebate when a resident buys a rain barrel, which can be used to collect water and irrigate plants, trees and gardens.

Larry Rich, Long Beach's sustainability coordinator, said that a 1,000-square-foot roof can shed 600 gallons of water during a storm that produces 1 inch of rain.

The county's water district also gives rebates for high-efficiency toilets and soil moisture systems,

Visit SocalWaterSmart.com for more information on those rebates.

The Water Replenishment District of Southern California also offers advice on how to conserve water at wrd.org/conservation. The site lists programs, rebates, landscaping tips and factoids such as: "A leaky faucet can waste 1,500 gallons of water per month."

Editor's Note: This is the fifth and final story in a series on environmentally friendly, or green, homes in Long Beach.

Beneath dark clouds and driving rain, Larry Rich pulled his parka over his head and pushed on quickly, raising his voice to be heard above the sound of sloshing muck beneath his feet as he treaded over to a concrete shelter and took cover under a corrugated aluminum roof.

As he spoke with a sense of urgency about California's drought, water from the roof of the building, which houses landscaping tools and stone features, flowed onto the ground and into a handful of rain barrels designed to catch precipitation to be used for irrigating plants and trees.

Even in the face of the powerful winter storm that hit the state last week, Rich wasn't hesitant to share his message about saving money and doing one's part for the environment.

He shrugged off the irony of delivering such a message in driving rain because it seems lately that people are starting to get his point that water conservation is important.

Since Gov. Jerry Brown officially declared California in a drought in January, Rich, Long Beach's sustainability coordinator, has been hearing from more homeowners interested in water conservation.

“We saw an uptick in people being interested in rain barrels,” Rich said.

Rich could be fielding even more calls from Long Beach residents following Brown's highly publicized signing of legislation earlier this week to assist drought-affected communities and provide funding to make better use of local water supplies.

Although some believe that the drought will pass and water in the future will be plentiful, others such as Rich fear that climate change could bring abouta “new norm” for California.

Such a change could bring more drought conditions to the Western U.S., which is currently in a three-year period of severe drought, and stronger storms to much the rest of the nation, such as the East Coast's current “polar vortex” phenomenon.

Regardless of whether people are climate change believers or naysayers, the region always has been a place with moderate rainfall in the winter and almost no precipitation in the summer, Rich noted.

It's Rich's practice to keep the drought in mind at all times and plan for the long term – and he hopes Brown's declaration will continue to help make people aware that they live in a region without a lot of rainfall.

“For us, it's always a drought,” Rich said. “We're in this for the long haul in terms of greening our city and society.”

Rich was talking about the importance of water conservation at Willow Springs Park, a 47-acre, city-owned property with a master plan to gradually restore habitat to California native plants and provide enhanced public access and amenities.

He treats the park like it's a microcosm of the city. As he walked around the park, he spoke enthusiastically about what homeowners can do to conserve water.

Besides helping being more environmentally conscious, there are real dollar incentives for making homes more green and water-efficient – and despite the dark clouds that have recently produced some much-needed precipitation, there is still one of the worst droughts in California history to consider, Rich said.

Rich, who has been the sustainability coordinator since 2008, when the city's Office of Sustainability was formed, can rattle off a long list of incentives offered by the city and the county, some of which have come and gone.

The Laundry to Landscape program, also known as the gray water pilot program, enabled residents to use their washing machines to provide water for landscapes. The program was started in 2011 and since has ended.

The city conducted 33 gray water installations. The program had mixed results, but it taught Rich and his staff a great deal, he said.

“We're continuing to monitor the installations and water usage,” he said, adding that while some have saved water and some have not, “we know that we have reused over 300,000 gallons of water since the beginning of the program.”

In 2010, Long Beach started offering free mulch deliveries to residents. The city generates wood-chipped mulch from the regular trimming of street trees and parkway trees, and it stockpiles the mulch to be doled out to homeowners who want to conserve water or cover barren patches of ground in their yards.

The city conducts mulch deliveries on Tuesdays and Thursdays to anyone who makes a request, which can be done by filling out an online form at Sustain-ableLB.com. There's also a self-service mulch pile at 2702 California Ave. The hours are typically Tuesday to Friday from 9 a.m. to noon.

The free mulch has proven popular.

“People can sign up to get the free mulch delivery, but the waiting list is six to eight weeks,” Rich said.

According to Rich, roughly 14 deliveries per week are made to Long Beach residents.

“When you water a landscape with mulch, you don't have to water it as much,” Rich said.

Many of those who have been digging into the city's mulch are those who signed up for the Long Beach Water Department's popular Lawn to Garden Turf Replacement Program, Rich said.

That program offers incentives to homeowners to tear out their lawns and replace them with “California-friendly landscaping” that requires less watering. The department offers rebates of up to $3,000 for those who qualify.

“There's been over 1,000 installations already,” Rich said.

Some residents have taken advantage of more than one incentive to reduce water usage.

When Anna Bjornsdotter and her husband, José Lopes, bought their home at 151 E. Osgood St. in North Long Beach near De Forest Park in 2008, the 780-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bath property was in bad shape.

“It was a dump,” Bjornsdotter said.

So the 40-something couple set about to remodel the house, and they did so with the environment in mind.

“We tried to do it as sustainably as we could,” she said.

They took the Water Department up on its Lawn to Garden program in 2010, tearing out the lawn and putting in California native flowers that don't require a lot of water – two types of California fuchsia, penstemon, monkey flower, sedum flower, goldenrod and California lilac.

“We probably have 35 plants in our garden,” said Bjornsdotter, who owns a small startup women's clothing line called Ethyria, which uses recycled materials.

Bjornsdotter, who is six months pregnant, said she is grateful for not having to do a lot of watering and maintenance, and her husband, a local artist, also is grateful for not having to mow a lawn, which both consider to be a boring and unneeded feature that seems to be in the front of almost every home in Southern California.

They have three fruit trees – a peach, lime and lemon tree – that they irrigate with gray water because they were among the homeowners who took the city up on its program a few years ago.

After she does a load of laundry, there's a switch Bjornsdotter can turn to divert the used water into a pipe that comes out of the garage and into the ground to a connector that spills out to the trees.

“I never water them with a hose,” Bjornsdotter said. “I have no sprinklers. Everything is hand-watered, rain-watered or gray water-watered.”

Both Bjornsdotter and Lopes are transplants. Lopes was born in Mexico, and Bjornsdotter is from Borlänge, Sweden.

Despite not being born here, the couple believe the environment should be respected and that water conservation is a “moral obligation,” particularly for those who live in the region.

“This is Southern California, and lawns are sort of unnatural,” she said. “Even when there's no drought, there's no water.”

As part of his message, Rich likes to remind people that Southern California's climate is considered Mediterranean, which means plants in the region get all their rainfall in the winter and have adapted to survive without water during the summer.

Initiatives such as the gray water program, though no longer active, are providing an important experience to take into an uncertain future, Rich said.

“The drought at some point could be permanent,” he added. “Landscapes are decorative, but they don't keep people alive. At some point more people may embrace the opportunity to use gray water on their landscape because at some point you may no longer be allowed to use potable water to water your lawn.”

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